Let the Monster Rise
by raspberryseedz
Summary: "He has no time for sadness." One-shot. Very dark. Very AU. Rated for violence.


**A/N:**

**Ok, I promise you guys I am working on something with these characters that's hopefully more substantive than these short Why-Mavis-is-so-important glorified drabbles. I want to write as much of it as I can before I start posting chapters because, knowing me, I'll keep changing plot elements even after they're written out and I want this story to make some bit of sense.**

**This was an idea that hit me one day and I had to get it out of my system before I could write anything else. It literally hijacked my brain.**

**The title is a song from Repo! the Genetic Opera which, oddly enough, has more to do with the plot of the actual movie than it does with this little AU, but I thought the title worked with the tone of it.**

* * *

_Let the Monster Rise_

He has no time for sadness. No capacity for it. He might have, for a moment, stopped to feel it crash in on him as the flames roared against the castle, hungry and devouring and awful. But sadness quickly slips through his fingers like dust. His hands are empty. Idle. And idle hands are the devil's playthings.

There are so many of them, even at his highest speed he can't hope to catch them all. They'd had the castle surrounded, probably more of them swarming the forests like gnats. He doesn't stop to think about how outnumbered he is, it's not like he expects to survive the night. He doesn't have a strategy. He doesn't have a plan. He just charges.

A flock of them are brave enough to try and meet him and in a flash he relieves them of their necks. He snakes around a cluster of a dozen or so and pushes them straight into the inferno with his mind. The door slams and the whole wall quivers and rolls before crumbling to the ground on top of them. There's shouting all around him.

Vampire.

Demon.

Killer.

Monster.

He dodges a pitchfork, a blunt knife, a hammer. He's too fast for them. He knocks them right and left into the walls, not stopping to watch them hit or hear the satisfying sound of their bodies snapping on impact. Several shots ring out. One of them gets lucky and a bullet connects with his head, whipping it backwards and knocking him off balance. Several more hit while he regains himself. A knife embeds into his abdomen and he draws it out like a stickpin.

One of them screams and he takes him by the throat, ripping the cry from its owner in a messy gash. They're all running frantic now, screaming in an unintelligible mass. They care no more for one another than they would a cockroach. They're trampling each other.

He closes in on one. And then another. And then another. They're scattered everywhere but he cannot stop. He's insatiable. He's dripping and all he can see is stained with red but he rages on.

Vampire.

Butcher.

Devil.

He finds one running with a stake clutched in one hand and knocks him to the ground. The stake plunges into the man's chest again and again till his ribcage is shattered and the hole is large enough for a fist.

The sun is rising and it hurts in so many different ways, but he's already too far gone. He knows he's already dead. The instant they killed his family they'd killed him, too. And he would burn to ashes with them.

The next kill is difficult. His energy is gone. He's smoldering on his last legs, a fire being smothered out by the sunlight. He manages to get a hold on him long enough to snap his neck with a twist.

Monster.

Killer.

Demon.

Monster.

Vampire.

_Monster!_

They've regrouped. A whole fleet of them surrounds him. The sunlight's made him too slow, he can't move. He doesn't care to. The crowd descends on him in a wave and he screams.

The scream suddenly melts off into a high wail. He's sitting up in bed, startled and in a cold sweat. He's not the one crying.

He scrambles to the crib, pulls the baby into his arms with a gentle reverence.

"It's alright," his throat is dry and he almost chokes on his own voice. "It's alright," he says it over and over until it no longer sounds strange, until he starts to believe it himself. He sinks into a grateful heap on the floor cradling the little girl in both hands.

His child is crying.

He has no time for anger.


End file.
